[Christopher Mulrooney]

Roadkill
R.D. Armstrong
2002; 68pp; $9.99
12 Gauge Press
POB 6011
San Clemente, CA 92674


Nabokov in Transparent Things has a good deal of fun with a pencil that slips in the mind’s eye from handy utensil to anterior states of being: block of wood, tree, acorn.

R.D. Armstrong has a carefully studied, unencumbered position, for him a pencil stays handy for writing very fast, and that’s what his poem is all about. A very fast trip up and down the coast, in the midst of which occurs the 9/11 attack.

He eschews punctuation and strophic form, but capitalizes each line for classic formality. His poem races steadily on from the observed to the remembered or the imagined in a coherent reality governed by the drive. When he stops or slows down, the poem does so, too (making you think of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, which famously stopped for years after the raft was destroyed, until Huck made a new one).

Great poem.</font><font size="1">

Somewhere near Scio grass seed
Capitol of the world I pull into a rest
Stop stretch the legs and see the
Sights while I’m sitting in my car
Eating a snack the welcome wagon
Shows up a trailer towed by an old
It’s not that old pickup maybe 70s
Been rode hard and put away wet
Out of which come three big humans
You can hear the springs on the
Pickup groan in relief as they step
Out one of the gals must be pushing
Three hundred pounds quick as a lick
They get the thing set up well quick
As you can go being LARGE some
One is firing up the coffee while
The first customers are lining up
A radio clicks on and a man leans
In to hear better one of the three a
Man of some girth brings two jack
Stands to the rear of the trailer
Next he’s got a bottle jack and
Some blocks of wood and I know
There’s going to be trouble here
Because this has gotten Murphy’s
Law written all over it he starts to
Jack it up but he didn’t place the
Jack well and after about two inches
It pops out this brings the 300 pound
Gal out to investigate which raises the
Trailer a good three inches up which
Gives him enough room to work in
And soon the trailer is solid and level
I casually look around at the flow
Parade numb parade as Scott Gordon
Calls it of travelers slouches by can I
Be the only one watching this tableau
Of Americana the only war these folks
Are fighting is the war of exhaustion
No one seems to find this remotely
Interesting but me when I turn back
There is a man in snakeskin boots
And a rodeo belt buckle that could
Be dangerous asking directions to
Coos Bay some kinda festival he
Leaves with coffee in an old Cadillac

[Michael Juster]

Abysmal poem...

[Robert Swagman]

I would have stopped reading at the first cliche - about line 8. I did stop, actually, but went back to it because of your recommendation to see what I was missing. I didn't find it.

Looked up 12 Gauge Press, since I've never heard of it. The site didn't list the names of anyone involved, that I could find, only the poets names on submissions.

Is that site your endeavor?

[Christopher Mulrooney]

Your taste, Michael, is infallibly mediocre.

The cliché in line 8 is italicized to represent that it is a cliché, Robert, and so it is humorous, like your endeavor to suggest that I am the éminence grise of 12 Gauge Press.

[Richard Wakefield]

CM:
Please refrain from ad hominem attacks. If opinions that differ from yours are so intolerable to you that you have to attack the people holding those opinions, then don't post.
RPW

[Robert Swagman]

Chris

I suggested nothing, only asked a simple question.

There will be no more.

[Christopher Mulrooney]

Richard, I bow to your wisdom.